Assignmnt - Ceylon Read Free Page A

followed his instructions when he left the Pettah and headed for the Cinnamon Gardens. Durell told him to go slowly. He offered himself as a target. But nothing happened. At the gardens, in the residential area, he told the driver to circle the big museum. Traffic was
    heavy. The big lumbering buses made splashes of red against the blend of modem and old when he rode back to the commercial fort area of Colombo.
    Nothing happened.
    He could not spot anyone.
    Book technique in this pattern was fine, up to a point. It ignored the personal, the intuitive hunch, the primal sense of pursuit. Like a primitive in the jungle, he could sense in his gut that a predator was after him. It did not make sense. The incidents with the taxi and the angry carter could have been coincidence. He did not think so. He looked at the hawkers and at their wares spread on the sidewalks, at the sleek American cars, the mixture of Western and traditional clothes, the narrow alleys radiating from broad, clean boulevards. He thought of the Arabs, the Persians, the Chinese who first came here to trade for spices; the Portuguese, Dutch, and English who had followed. In the 14th century a Chinese trader named Wang Ta-Youan had first given Colombo her name; fifty years later, Ibn Batuta, a Moor from Morocco, named Ceylon the island of Serendib. Each had left a mark on the timeless island, once a land of elegant kingdoms, of Buddhist worship in conflict with a later flow of Tamil Hindus from India.
    “Driver, I didn’t tell you to go here,” he said suddenly.
    “There is trouble up ahead, mister. A protest march, yes? There have been riots, mister. Are you sight-seeing Colombo? I could take you to the zoo—the elephant circus there is outstanding. Or perhaps you would like to see the Kandyan dancers at the harbor? Mister?”
    “Turn right,” Durell said.
    The taxi driver kept straight ahead. “Nehe, karuna kara. No, please.” He chattered in Sinhalese for a brief spate. Durell looked at the back of his round head. “The Naga is raising a great political disturbance here, mister.”
    “The Naga?”
    “He calls himself the Cobra’s Bow. He heads up the PFM—the People’s Freedom Movement. Tamils, all of them.” The driver spat out the window of the taxi. “You would not want to see this. It gives tourists a bad impression of our country.”
    Durell took out his gun, a snubby-barreled .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. He held it on his knee.
    “Turn right,” he said again.
    “They talk—the PFM—of discovering the Buddha Stone. Have you heard of this?”
    “No.”
    “It is disturbing. A most precious religious relic! In their hands! It is not to be tolerated.”
    Durell put the muzzle of his gun to the driver’s right ear. “Stop the car. Prevasimin. Be careful.”
    The man turned his head, just a little. Durell could see only the curve of his brown cheek, the pouting mouth, the gleam of a dark brown eye.
    “You’re not Sinhalese,” Durell said.
    “No, sir. I am part Portuguese, part Tamil. I come from Trincomalee. My family, my wife and children, five there. Please, mister?”
    “Stop the car. Who hired you?”
    “You did, sir.”
    “Who told you to wait for me at the Pettah and pick me up if I looked for a cab?”
    “I do not know who the gentleman was.”
    “How much did he pay you?”
    “Twenty dollars.”
    “American or Hong Kong?”
    “American, sir. Please. Your gun—”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He was black, mister.”
    “African black or American?”
    “How can I tell you that, mister? He spoke in good English.”
    “British or American accent?”
    “American, sir.”
    It still didn’t make sense. He smelled the sweat of sudden fear from the taxi driver. The sophisticated techniques taught by K Section were suddenly scrubbed from his mind. Anger touched him, and he pushed it away. Anger never helped. He kept his gun at the driver’s head until they halted in a slot between bullock carts and stalls,